Written by Daily adult admission for the Lincoln Park Aquatics Center in the city of Marion will increase from its current rate of $7.00 to $9.00, while annual memberships (without the early-bird discount) for a family of up to six will jump from $275.00 to $315.00.
As you can see from the attached chart, daily admission and membership revenues for the aquatics center have taken a nosedive over the past few years–not that they were ever good–and not that the pool has ever broken even in its operational budget.
Rates have not increased since 2014, according to the city, so this is something that should have been done years ago and periodically adjusted for inflation to cover operational expenses. The pool operates as a businesslike enterprise and, as such, it is supposed to be breaking even; it shouldn’t have to be bailed out by the city’s general fund each and every year.
The pool is supposed to be open from Memorial Day (May 25th) to Labor Day (September 7th). That’s 105 days in total.
Hours of operation are Sunday to Thursday 11 am to 6 pm and Friday & Saturday 11 am to 7 pm.
If you take last year’s daily admissions revenue of $47,549.50 and divide it by 105 days, the pool made $452.85 in admission sales per day. With an adult admission of $7, that amounts to roughly 65 tickets sold per day.
Obviously there are a lot of kids and others buying tickets who receive a reduced rate, and the pool isn’t open for all 105 days during the season, but it still gives you a general idea of what kind of business it’s doing.
On the membership side, assuming that they were all regularly priced $275.00 family memberships (and I’m sure they weren’t), the pool sold approximately 120 memberships last year.
We’ll have to see how admission and membership sales do this year with the increased rates. Hopefully, they’ll increase those sluggish revenues.
To learn more about the aquatic center’s expense budget, check out my other articles at
Marionwatch.com/swampfox
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